Krytyka Prawa. Niezależne studia nad prawem
Comments on Law Studies and Legal Apprenticeship from the Perspective of Contemporary Market Expectations
Uczelnia Łazarskiego
Abstract
A discussion on the law studies and the legal apprenticeship system in Poland has been offered in the article from the point of view of a question about the objectives of educating lawyers and about whether the current system of legal education is appropriate. By pointing to the system-determined role of lawyers pursuing their profession within institutionalised structures of the system of justice, the article concentrates, among others, on issues concerning the selection of the subjects to be taught. But especially on the dilemma whether legal education should produce skilled law technicians or elites co-shaping the ethical, intellectual, cultural, and economic profile of society. The views contained in the article are presented starting from an assessment of the significance of market knowledge through a determination of the utility of curricula for further professional development of lawyers both as actual lawyers and pursuing other professions and ending with a comparison of teaching broken down into traditional branches of law and newly-forming fields thereof. The article addresses also the claims for opening law to interdisciplinarity and the role of lawyer as a profession of trust in the context of a constant need to reinforce the trust in law itself.